Diabetes Mellitus type I is also known as juvenile diabetes. It is a kind of diabetes mellitus that result from autoimmune damage of insulin-producing beta cells of pancreas. The successive lack of insulin is the cause of elevated glucose in the blood and urine. The result of this increase can be polyuria (frequent urination), polyphagia (increased hunger), polydipsia (increased thirst) and weight loss.

Type I diabetes is deadly unless cured by insulin. The best method of administering insulin is through injection. Inhaled insulin and insulin pumps had been available at several times. Transplants of pancreas have been used also to cure type I diabetes; however, this process is still currently being experimented.

There are no preventive measures against the expansion of type I diabetes. A lot of people who have developed type I are otherwise in a good state of life or healthy. Type 1 can be differentiated from type II diabetes through a C-peptide assay, which measures the production of endogenous insulin. Treatment of this type is continued in all cases forever. However, treatment is a burden for plenty of people.

Complications can be associated with both high and low blood sugar levels. Low glucose will lead to spasms or episodes of losing consciousness and needs emergency treatment. High glucose can lead to tiredness and can also lead to long term destruction to some parts of the body like the eyes an joints.

Causes of Type 1 Diabetes:

• Environment - this factor strongly influences the appearance of type 1. Some studies showed that for identical twins, if one had type 1, the other twin only had type I 30% - 50% of the time. In spite of having the right similar genome, 1 twin had the illness, and the other didn't get the disease; this suggests that factors from the environment, in addition to factors from genetics, can influence the prevalence of the disease.

• Genetics - type 1 diabetes is polygenic in nature because of the different genes that contribute to its appearance. It depends on the locus or mixture of loci, it could be leading, recessive or somewhere in between. The strongest genetic material, IDDMI, can be seen in MHC Class 2 region in chromosome VI, at staining region VIp21. This is responsible for the histocompatibility disorder trait of type 1: pancreatic cells which produce insulin display antibodies that hit these beta cells. Weaker genes can be seen also on chromosomes 11 and 18.